After the Civil War, the shotgun house became one of the most popular home styles in the rural South. Lore held that a bullet could pass from the front door to the back door without hitting anything. Its simple, narrow wooden construction and open floorplan helped keep it cool in summer, while heat from woodstoves flowed through the house in cooler months. Keeping a farmhouse clean was important because dirty areas attracted pests and could make people sick; unfinished floors were swept often, and rooms were scrubbed with warm water and lye soap using a corn husk mop when kitchen grease accumulated. Some farm families spent their whole lives in one home, where children were born, the sick were cared for, and family members died, while sharecropper families often moved frequently, sometimes seasonally. After long days in the fields, a hot meal at the family table and a warm bed offered comfort. In summer, the porch became an important living space because the wood stove kept indoor temperatures high into the evening; families played games, shelled beans, played music together, and sometimes moved their bedrooms onto the porch. Internal heat came from a cook stove in the kitchen and a wood stove in the living room or parlor. Unexpected guests such as distant family or traveling preachers might sleep on the porch in warmer months, or under the large farm table in the kitchen during winter to use the open space and the cook stove's remaining heat. Little was wasted on the farm, and in the 1930s families used soft cotton sugar and flour sacks, along with worn-out clothes, to make warm, unique family quilts. Mattresses were typically filled with corn shuck, cotton, or feathers. Small bedrooms were easier to heat, so parents slept in one room while several children shared the spare bedroom. Without indoor plumbing, the outhouse served as the main bathroom, and a chamber pot stood by the bed for nighttime emergencies.